In April, the company will begin a crackdown on cable cheats in conjunction with local police and the Lake County's state's attorney's office to be sure that cable scofflaws are prosecuted.

In Illinois, that can mean six months in jail, a $1,000 fine and a lien to recoup all unpaid cable fees.

"There are some smart people out there, and it's pretty easy to defeat cable coding if you know how," said Paul Ashley, general manager of US Cable's Lake County operations.

About 14 percent of people in Lake County who have access to cable tap into the service without paying for it, Ashley said. That can be done through readily available "pirate boxes" that unscramble encoded cable programs or through even more arcane ingenuity requiring plenty of solder and a good helping of specialized knowledge.

Ashley presided over a news conference Tuesday at US Cable's Lake County headquarters in Waukegan to explain the amnesty program and the problem of cable piracy. To illustrate his point, Ashley showed off a small collection of confiscated pirate boxes.

Some, such as the pancake box, are small, spartan and easy to hide. Others come equipped with LED displays and programmable channel switching. They are easy to buy, mostly through mail-order companies, and some are built from kits or from scratch, Ashley said.

Under local, state and federal laws, officially regulated and franchised cable companies such as US Cable are empowered to confiscate pirate boxes. In simplest terms, that means that cable guys can just walk out of your home with them.

US Cable. which serves 17 communities in northern Lake County, loses about $4 million per year in fees to illegal customers. About $200,000 of those losses would go to municipalities under cable franchise arrangements, Ashley said.

The crackdown will also help US Cable's bottom line. Striving to collect fees that should already be paid is one of the few ways highly regulated cable companies can drum up new revenue, Ashley said.

To be granted amnesty, illegal customers must take their pirate boxes to US Cable, 3233 W. Grand Ave., Waukegan, by March 31. In exchange for the boxes, customers will receive a certificate guaranteeing them amnesty from any future legal action by US Cable for tampering with cable television.

"We'll also give them an opportunity to become legal customers," Ashley said.